


Dear Diary

by badwips



Category: True Detective
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 03:46:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4164504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwips/pseuds/badwips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fourteen straight hours of staring at dead bodies and these are the things you think of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Diary

At the twelve hour mark, the second week, Rust’s fingers are cut raw from slipping on pages and photos as he shifts them around on the stacked document boxes in front of him. The images are stuck to him. While he hasn’t spoken for ten hours, he can hear women’s voices.

And now every woman has red hair.

 

‘I’ll be a dancer,’ she bends with the breeze, curving with the branches of the trees that surround them, ‘you reckon? They could fit a pole and a stage in someplace, make a little club. I could learn, the others could, and it’d bring in more people. People like to feel welcome, like a place that feels like home— don’t they?’

‘What you sayin’, Dory, sweetheart?’ He’s working on some car parts in their overgrown backyard. She doesn’t need his attention, lifts her bare feet carefully through the sharp, scrubby grass and reaches her hands to the sun, imagining she’s more graceful. Grandpa Kelly used to ruffle her hair, press five bucks into her hand, saying she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. He hadn’t seen a girl like her looking more burdened. 

Often, they want her to smile. A lovely smile.A yearbook smile. Oh, and that hair, like none of the other girls. 

But Dora is no individual, she thinks. Why would she want to be that different? She’d only be lonely.

First he fixed her car, then he sold her some pills, then he asked if she wanted to sleep with him. She didn’t. She imagined him coming to her job and asking again, and that repulsed her enough to try and avoid him. They began to occupy similar circles; there were only so many bars in town, and her car didn’t survive long after Charlie had worked on it. She thanked him for it the next time she saw him; there was no need for her to have it, anyway, she could get a ride with another girl, and she never felt like she was aware of the right things when she was driving. 

He asked if she’d get with him, again. Dora sipped her drink and shook her head, no, but she still bought some more pills off him.

They’d dropped out of the same school but it took her a while to remember him. 

Little Charlie Loudmouth. 

Her horoscope told her that she herself would have made a correct prediction in the past week, and that was proven when Charlie showed up at the ranch, looking for her. The girls pulled together their defences— when a stranger shows up knowing a girl’s name, it’s not usually for a good reason. Still, Dora relented. He’d always been sweet to her, didn’t charge her much, and in the right light, he was kind of cute, boyish and always compensating for it with his big talk. 

He’d brought her some flowers.

She didn’t want to sleep with him at work, so she took the day off and went home with him. Lying in his bed, with Charlie against her side and too small to hold her properly, Dora picked the zigzag petals from every iris.

His house became theirs and they cleaned it up together. A few days into it and he told her that he’d been close to broke, anyhow, and he was sore glad she was around, else he’d have to get another roommate. There were three bedrooms in that house; it had belonged to one set of Charlie’s grandparents, and he’d apparently been their favourite. 

 

‘Did you care for’m?’

 

‘Hell no, I look like a nurse?’

 

She brushes the downsides off with a smile. She convinces him to let her give him a haircut, after he tells her he’s been getting in with some gang or other. They have a party, and she dances around the bonfire like it gave birth to her. They love her when she makes enough gumbo for everyone. They love her sticky chocolate cake.

She eats the last few bites herself, sitting in the grey-dark kitchen in her singed white dress. There’s no ring on her finger, but there’s a tattoo on Charlie’s neck.  

They sign the papers the very next morning.

Asking him if he’ll come to church with her the following Sunday, she already knows he’ll be making excuses, even if he agrees the first few times. 

She’s right. So she stops going, too, justifying it by thinking that you don’t have to be in the Lord’s house to pray. After a while, she starts to miss it. 

 

‘Charlie, I don’t wanna go by myself. What’s the good in being together, if we don’t barely do nothin’  together?’ 

 

'But we do, I see you all the goddamn time, girl. We live in the same fuckin' house.’

 

‘You ain’t even seein’ me.’ 

 

He doesn’t hit her, doesn’t even raise his fist, even though he’s angry enough to scream at her. She walks out before he does, not that he would. He hates to leave when he doesn’t have to, and she conjures up images of scrabbling little creatures in their nests, draws them with half-shaved heads, digging pen into paper as if to pierce it. 

She reads what she’s written and tears it out, burns it until there’s nothing left. In the woods a little way behind his house, she sits for a while, smearing her face with ash when she wipes away the tears that should be there and aren’t. 

They argue about too much, now.  

Jan looks Dora over, dubiously, and tells her that as far as she was concerned, the door was always open to her if she could work and not cause any complaints. It feels honest to stay there, and she takes what she can get, and talks to them all even though they don’t listen, and takes what she has to to get by. For the most part, she’s contented. She goes back to Charlie’s house when she knows he’s not there, to take some of her clothes and a few other items; candles, books, things he wouldn’t notice were missing. 

He calls and she ignores it. He comes back for her after a week or two, and she expects more flowers. 

He’s lost a back tooth and gained another tattoo on the hand that clutches at her, as he falls to his knees and hoarsely begs his wife to come back to their home. 

It’s become special effort for him to do what she wants, outside of the bedroom. Wear a nice shirt on a Sunday. Go dancing and drinking, or walking in the woods, sedate, boring. He takes stock of what interests they share and figures there’s one that’s pretty significant, and he can provide her with a taste of something new. 

The world becomes a mess of colour.

Running and spinning in the fields, lying in the dirt. Falling asleep on the floor of the living room with a meadow of filigree flowers of the sun on her skin. Being free, again. It felt like itchy sweat and she wanted more of it.

And it’s the same, and it’s the same, and it’s the same.

She’s done such wrong, she’s doing such wrong, she can see with utter clarity and it sends her into fear, trying to find some answers when her brain doesn’t latch on to any one idea, the inside of her head is all noise, dulled, she’s listening against the wall that she could try and climb over.

When she writes anything down, she finds she’s repeating herself.

Walking beside the highway, out of sight, she saw it, sunken, and at first she saw it as a castle, until it became clear it was a church. Their doors were open. Next moment of awareness, she was seated in the audience, listening.

 

‘And He said, ‘come to me, all who labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’ He said, ‘take my yoke upon you, learn from me, I’m humble. My yoke is easy, my burden is light.’ He’s speakin’ not of rest without labour, that labour doesn’t end even when you join Him, in His kingdom. And who, out of us, would really want it? Leisure has its costs.’

 

Her head eventually lolls against her shoulder, only her eyes following the preacher’s dramatic dance across the stage. 

 

‘Seems he’s right.’ An amused voice from the row behind, leaning closer. She’d shy away, but it’s not aggressive, and not too gentle. Only friendly. They all seemed friendly, here, but his friendliness masks no judgement. She manages not to let her voice slur too much when she speaks.

 

‘What d’you mean?’

 

‘There’s no end to the labour of life. There’s no end.’

 

‘Don’t sound so good, to me.’

 

 ‘What if you simply weren’t aware of the repetition?’

She’d thought about it, but she doesn’t go back to the church. Instead, she keeps listening to the tall man with the scars on his face. She hadn’t noticed those, right away. He’s strangely private and open. He’s got more to say than anyone else she’s ever met, it all links up in a beautiful tapestry, covering everything like a patchwork quilt, and what’s more, she’s not the only one listening to him.

So many people to talk to and share with that she forgets she has a home to go back to, until it becomes clear that there’s no use in keeping this new knowledge to herself. That defeats it.

Yet, when she returns to her mother, for the first time in months, it’s almost a confession of guilt. She sees her young self in the dusty photos on the sideboard and she wonders who she’s betraying. 

Her mother makes her lunch and Dora eats it sitting in her dad’s favourite chair. This isn’t history she can shrug off, no matter how much she tries to convince herself. Her mother will doubt her, will try and help her, won’t believe her when she says that she’s happy just being. That she’s found a place, a real home, and people like her. She’s living a blessed life. Can’t she see how happy she is? 

All these people from the past, they look at her with worry, and don’t hear the miraculous clarity of her words.

Maybe she should have realised that the fun wouldn’t last, perfection was something unachievable. 

 

‘No living branches, Dora.’

 

‘You gonna burn me up?’

 

In the pause, while he was listening, his voice had shifted to something plummy, syrupy. He reaches for her hair but doesn’t touch it, ‘why, you burn so brightly, already.’

 

Modestly, she laughs, and looks away from him, absently putting together thorny twigs and grass, weaving them around antlers. 

’Could I get a little water? Just a little, please.’ Involuntarily trembling, she wishes she wasn’t so aware of her nakedness and the dirt on her skin, cuts on her feet from playing in the forest with the children, but it’s all fading, all the while. 

 

‘And have it turn to dust upon touching your lips? My dear, there’s much greater things ahead of you than those simple temptations would allow.’

 

Squinting at him, she understands. She’ll prove herself. 

Looking at what she’s gathered, she sees the pattern, the finished work, the very end, beginning through the centre of a circle.

Opening his eyes only to see a flat, greyish mass of chewed up flesh, Rust lifts his head away from the photos, stands up slow. Looking at his watch, he’s been asleep for almost two hours. He blinks as the lights above flicker on to his movements, sees her standing there, dark streaks running down from her stomach. No blindfold or crown.

He gathers up his work and Dora smiles with purple lips, patiently waiting until he takes her hand.

 

**Author's Note:**

> She is not waiting. Not quite. It is more that the years mean nothing to her, anymore, that the dreams and the street cannot touch her.  
> She remains on the edges of time, implacable, unhurt, beyond, and one day you will open your eyes and see her; and after that, the dark.  
> It is not a reaping. Instead, she will pluck you, gently, like a feather, or a flower for her hair.
> 
> Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman


End file.
